Consoles are conventionally provided in vehicles to provide an enclosed storage space accessible to the vehicle occupants. In such a storage space, vehicle occupants store miscellaneous articles including music tapes, compact disks, coins, address books, etc. The articles conventionally stored in these storage spaces do not require a specific temperature and thus the console temperature generally corresponds to the ambient air temperature in the vehicle. However, some articles, for example beverages, food, insulin, etc., require a temperature controlled environment which would provide a driver and/or passenger convenient and safe storage for these articles. Operators of vehicles continually demand greater conveniences in their mobile vehicles and, therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a temperature controlled compartment wherein articles in need of a cooled or heated environment may be stored. By placing the temperature controlled compartment in the console, which is readily available to the vehicle driver, the distraction of the driver from the road and happenings around the vehicle is reduced.
Thermoelectric devices are known which utilize the Peltier effect in solid state electrical components to operate as small heat pumps. Thermoelectric devices include a plurality of thermocouples mounted between heat sinks. The thermocouples transfer thermal energy from one heat sink to the other dependent on the direction of DC power applied to the thermocouples.
The present invention addresses the above need for convenient mobile vehicle temperature controlled compartments by utilizing thermoelectric devices to control the temperature in the vehicle compartments.